Better hang a big stocking

The IFA convention in Berlin is off to a fast and furious start with product makers pouring out announcements by the handful. Among the attendees is Acer, which revealed its new (and rather extensive) product lineup for the holiday season. Acer's new products include a pair of Aspire R Series convertible laptops. two Aspire Switch Series 2-in-1 hybrid PCs, three Iconia Series tablets, and a Liquid Series smartphone.

Super cool in every respect

When Corsair released its closed-loop H80 water cooler in 2011, we found it to be one of the best-performing dual-fan kits available. It was also very loud at full blast and cumbersome to install, and the updated H80i model sets out to address these issues while also improving performance.

Note: This review was taken from the March 2013 issue of the magazine.

In the pantheon of nerd achievement, water cooling ranks near the top—somewhere between installing Linux and becoming fluent in Klingon. And there’s a reason the hardest of the hardcore prefer water cooling: It’s incredibly effective at lowering the temperatures of core system components. With higher thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity than air coolers, water cooling can mean double-digit drops in CPU and GPU temperatures.

However, water cooling isn’t exactly a walk in the park. You’ve got two challenges ahead of yourself: Designing the water-cooling system that’s right for your PC, and actually putting it together. Both tasks will take some time and effort, but neither has to be daunting. Every first-time water-cooling build is a learn-as-you go experience, but we’ll walk you through the details and help you avoid the mistakes that would take the biggest toll on your system and your wallet.

When Swiftech said it was sending us the most extreme kit it has ever built, the drooling commenced. The kit arrived, and sure enough, it’s extreme—and it performs extremely well, to boot. But while it’s the best-performing kit we’ve ever tested, it’s not perfect.

Now that GPU temperatures are exceeding CPU temps, water-cooling has become a much more appealing way to deliver exceptional cooling to your videocard without a lot of noise. The problem is, no one has built stand-alone GPU water-cooling kits—until now. Thermaltake’s Tide Water is an innovative product that indeed succeeds at cooling your GPU in silence. Trouble is, the omission of RAM heatsinks means that while your GPU will be chillin’, the rest of your videocard will be suitable for grillin’.